Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 25
The US should welcome more students from China, but to study the humanities rather than sciences, the second-ranked US diplomat said on Monday, noting that US universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technology given security concerns.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said the US needed to recruit more international students for those fields, but from India – an increasingly important US security partner – not China.
For years, Chinese students have made up the largest foreign student body in the US and totaled nearly 290,000 in the 2022/23 academic year. But some in academia and civil society argue that deteriorating US-China relations and concerns about theft of US expertise, have derailed scientific cooperation and subjected Chinese students to unwarranted suspicion.
Campbell was asked about the China Initiative introduced by the Trump administration, intended to combat Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, which ended under the Biden administration after critics said it spurred racial profiling of Asian Americans.
Campbell said some had suggested that China was the only source to make up the shortage of science students.
Campbell said the US had to be careful to not eliminate links between China and the US, but officials in Beijing were largely to blame for any withering in academic, business or non-profit sector ties.
“It really has been China that has made it difficult for the kinds of activities that we would like to see sustaining,” Campbell said, adding that foreign executives and philanthropists were wary about long-term stays in China due to concerns about personal security.
Source: Reuters
